[SPOILERS] naufragar, Charriu, and Zalson's Threepenny Opera

[naufragar]

More coastal fog gazing.



I think the area south of Shipping is coastal. Either Pindicator's continent wraps down or there's an island here. Our next city gets founded in two turns.

We need to figure out when we want to expand south past the desert belt Rusten could eventually settle on our continent if he gets the right border pops, and when/if he does, I'd like to be in a position to push him back off. The trouble is that the islands to our north are just so much better.

[Charriu]

I would not worry that much about the south. Yes, you should try to build at least another city there (light blue in my original dotmap) to claim the fish. But everything past the mountains looks really uninteresting. If I'm correct then the crab is the only food resource down there, is it?

[naufragar]

I would not worry that much about the south. Yes, you should try to build at least another city there (light blue in my original dotmap) to claim the fish. But everything past the mountains looks really uninteresting. If I'm correct then the crab is the only food resource down there, is it?

That we can see, yeah. We don't have a free boat or land unit to un-fog the western side, and I'm holding out hope there will be food down there. It might be some time before I can get a work boat out, but it's not a huge deal.

[naufragar]

Long time, no chat. Here's how things stand.



Shipping, the southern city on the new continent, has put a turn into a bowman in case it needs to be whipped. I haven't done this in Receiving because we'd lose hammers to decay. I'll feel safer in three turns when Receiving pops borders, but Commodore could still have a four move galley somewhere. I have to assume he has at least three-movers thanks to his general. The galley is positioned where it is in case we need to reinforce from Cragscleft.

In the wider world, the Pyramids have fallen (to Rusten) as has the Colossus (to DZ, who did indeed take Metal Casting with Oracle). Both of these are scary, moreso because they give their owners the punch they need to beat us to the Library, possibly leaving Currency for a bit. Hopefully, they are both wondered out. In the east of the above screen, you can seen Bonehoard building a settler. It'll spawn in 4 turns. I'm falling behind on expansion. Our south is so unappetizing and everything else requires significant investment. This next settler settles Charriu's marble site (and claims three deserts and three desert hills ). Next, I'm sorely tempted to reach all the way for that big northern island and settle on its western side. It would grab two fish! This is, however, an incredible stretch. We couldn't reinforce it, so it'd need probably 3 units to start, so we'd need two galleys. I really want to do it, but I could be talked out. Most likely, that spot is already claimed before I get there.

Got Commodore's graphs. I finagled it, so we only put 43 EP into him. Hopefully he appreciates the gesture. We'll see. I've switched EP to Rusten, who will get our graphs any day now, but will switch back if Commodore doesn't play ball.


Nasty.

[Charriu]

Is that from the fight with Superdeath?

[naufragar]

Is that from the fight with Superdeath?

I assume so, but I can't know. It lines up with the great general birth, so I'm cautiously optimistic that superdeath got the general. Dead units don't give great general XP.

[naufragar]

I figured it out. By this time in PB38, I was exploring and figuring out how to handle neighbors. There's been less of that this game, so let's go exploring.



Let's not go exploring. There's a tiny chance Rusten hasn't scouted this tile due to the peak and desert layout. Rusten (with the Pyramids, mind you) does not need gold.

And here's a bit about neighbors.


I poked the work boat around to check if there was a galley in the fog. There was not, plus Commodore halted EP spending on us. I didn't time the boat well: I can't use it to defog a route to Commodore, although I would like to trade with him. (Preferred trading partners are BGN and Commodore. If we open borders to Rusten, he can cross the ocean through our culture and scout our southern land which could then become his western overseas holdings. (I think? I assume he can use ocean tiles in our land with open borders.))

On the other hand, while the exploring micro works poorly, the tile micro for these two cities is a dream. Next turn, the work boat improves Receiving's fish, and Receiving gives up its horse to Shipping. Before the next pop point, we finish a mine. Those cities are starting to look like our toe hold on the far continent might be sturdy.

[naufragar]

Absolutely nothing happening. Slipping behind in demos, but hopefully we'll catch up planting cities soon.

Offered BGN open borders; he declined. Commodore offered them, and I accepted. We don't have trade with Commodore yet, which is why I hadn't offered. Don't know why we don't. It'll be annoying if I have to be the one to drag a work boat down to him. I'm also confused about BGN. It's free money, man! And neither of us has the Colossus or Pyramids.

[Zalson]

Can you give us a city overview?

[naufragar]

Can you give us a city overview?

Yes! Let's take a tour. (You'll see we are trading with BGN. I just played before he had a chance to accept last turn.   )



Our capitol. It's not a bad capitol, at all. It's loaning it's food away but working cottages. The galley will take a settler away to the norther islands. The bowman in the queue will join the settler.



If we had anything resembling a happy cap, this city would be great. I don't think we whip the settler. Need time for other builds to complete.



I wish the work boat Cragscleft is building could go scout Commodore, but this is needed to hook up fish for our prospective northern island city. If only we had time to work those cottages. If we can stay in the game, this will be a perfectly reasonable city. I've tagged a tile "farm eventually" because that tile will need to irrigate rice 1N of it.



Questionable, questionable micro. The idea is, we need to keep the forests to eventually chop out the Great Library, so can't improve those tiles. I'm bumping incredibly hard against the happy cap, but we can run scientists to make it more palatable. This work boat, too, will not scout. We have a settler two turns away from founding Charriu's marble city. This boat improves that city's fish. There's so much stuff that needs to get built. Yeesh. I'm tempted to start working on an overflow cascade. We don't need the lighthouse that badly.



Shipping just whipped its granary. It will complete its bowman, but this bowman will go with the capitol's bowman as escorts for our next settler. After that probably one more bowman. Then, who knows? This city isn't as vulnerable as Receiving.



Super vulnerable. Will want a work boat scout to keep Commodore honest. Those grasslands need to be workshops, but in the meanwhile, I'll probably cottage them.


Here are demos.


So, what went wrong? I'm not sure. It feels like I might have been too slow to plant cities? Our food situation isn't great. I'm envious watching BGN's nearest city keep growing from 3-6 every couple turns. But it's the happy cap that's absolutely brutal. Maybe should've contested Pyramids. We are ~9 turns away from Currency, so now is the time to plant cities like crazy. You've seen our build queues. It's not like I'm wasting time there, but we still need so many more units, workers, settlers. If we can grab the northern islands and their fish (and I realize I forgot to take a pic! Sorry!), I'll feel a touch better about our situation. But that's a huge if. We need Calendar for our only luxury. We need Iron Working for the north of our continent. Still, we're down 60 food to 100. That's very, very bad.

So, the immediate plan is push north to settle those food rich fishing villages boosted with Currency and Alphabet. After that, we'll think about settling our south. If someone beats us to the islands, I think we attack rather than trying to squeeze value out of the peaks and desert on the homeland.

Here's the foreign advisor. Rusten is still pumping us with EP and has placed archer pickets to make sure we don't get funny ideas. He'll be trouble.